Dear Colleagues,

Heat engines have been at the forefront of the development of thermodynamics. The word “Engine” was originally given to a device that converted heat energy to work. The improvements in efficiency of steam engines by, for instance, James Watt appeared to have no limits, which led to the pioneering work of Sadi Carnot who produced his seminal work “Reflexions sur la Puissance Mortice du Feu (Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat)”. This work was later adopted by William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) and Rudolf Clausius, who formulated the second Law of Thermodynamics and introduced the word Entropy. Clausius is credited with making thermodynamics a science. 

The understanding of irreversible thermal processes has been an important development in thermodynamics. The global concern about climate change brought about by carbon emissions has led to an interest in improving the efficiency of thermal processes, essentially entropy generation reduction by the development of the innovative use of combined cycles, energy recovery and storage.

This Special Issue aims to be a forum for the presentation of new and improved techniques of thermal system analysis. In particular, the analysis and interpretation of complex combined cycles and systems that minimize energy consumption and entropy generation that follow on from the work of Sadi Carnot. The editors welcome the submission of any papers that fall within the scope of this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Brian Agnew
Dr. Qian Zi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Entropy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• heat engines
• combined cycles
• heat transfer
• entropy generation
• second law analysis
• energy recovery